Ten Reasons Why Reading Is Important

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Reading teaches empathy. It puts you right inside someone else's thoughts and feelings. You feel what they feel and you understand them. Empathy, in turn, makes you a kinder person, someone others will want to associate with.

Reading broadens your horizons. Real life can surround you with people who are similar to you. They live in similar circumstances, come from a similar background, and have similar viewpoints. Books open up whole other worlds and force you to realize that the world is full of people living different lives from yours and that those differences make life interesting.

Reading improves grammar and spelling and the world needs more grammar police. If you read enough you will slowly absorb the difference between their and there and you will realize that incase is not a word. In case you didn't realize, there you have two of my pet peeves.

Books can provide an escape from reality and sometimes we all need that.

Reading is educational. Even fiction teaches you something, whether it is based around an unfamiliar culture or whether it is set in a time period you know nothing about, you can read a story and learn at the same time. Of course, there are also thousands of non-fiction books about any subject you might be interested in. Do you want to know how to build a log cabin? There is a book for that. Do you want to know all about dinosaurs? There is a book for that. Do you want to know how to sew? There is a book for that. The opportunities to learn are endless.

You always have something to do. Seriously, what do non-readers do in that inevitable downtime? You can't just stare at a screen all the time, can you? On second thought, don't answer that.

Reading broadens your vocabulary. It is possible you will not be able to pronounce the word correctly because you have only seen it written, but at least you will know what it means. Please tell me it is not just me who has been occasionally startled over the years when I hear a word pronounced for the first time. That wasn't how I was pronouncing it in my head.

Reading develops the imagination. When you read you picture what is happening, what the characters look like, what the setting is like, and you imagine what is going to happen next. Reading is active, not passive. It is not all served up to you in a neat package, your imagination has to make it come alive.

Reading reduces stress. A study by the University of Sussex found that reading reduces stress by up to 68% and it works better and faster than other forms of stress reduction.

Reading makes you attractive. No, it isn't going to make you suddenly drop dead gorgeous, but it is going to make you an empathetic, open-minded, imaginative, person who uses proper grammar. Who wouldn't want to talk to someone like that?

8 comments

I know, my kids were talking about how surprising they find it to be when they go to the house of a friend and there are no books. I understand that everybody might not be obsessed with books but I am amazed that so many people don't read at all.